Warzone (2017) Safety is an illusion: reflections on accountability

“People in relation to each other create healthy or unhealthy
exchanges. There is no absolute for “fucked up, ” “healed, ” or
“safe” - it changes with time, life circumstance, and each new
love affair. It is with feelings of unease that I have observed
the slippery slope of “emotional” abuse become a common
reason to initiate an accountability process...Here is the
problem with using this model for emotional abuse: it’s an
unhealthy dynamic between two people. So who gets to call
it? Who gets to wield that power in the community? (And
let’s all be honest that there is power in calling someone to an
accountability process.) People in unhealthy relationships
need a way to get out of them without it getting turned into a
community judgement against whoever was unlucky enough
to not realize a bad dynamic or call it abuse first...These
processes frequently exacerbate mutually unhealthy power
plays between hurt parties. People are encouraged to pick
sides and yet no direct conflict brings these kinds of
entanglements to any kind of resolve. ”

Warzone Distro
Warzone_Distro@riseup.net

2017

Safety is an Illusion:

Reflections on Accountability

This piece was originally published with a collection of others
in “Dangerous Spaces: Violent Resistance, Self-Defense, and
Insurrectional Struggle Against Gender”

I was asked by a dear friend to write this piece about accountability
within radical communities - offer some insight in light of the years we’ve
spent fighting against rape culture. Except I don’t believe in
accountability anymore. It should be noted that my anger and
hopelessness about the current model is proportional to how invested I’ve
been in the past. Accountability feels like a bitter ex-lover to me and I
don’t have any of those... the past 10 years I really tried to make the
relationship work but you know what?

There is no such thing as accountability within radical communities
because there is no such thing as community - not when it comes to
sexual assault and abuse. Take an honest survey sometime and you will
find that we don’t agree. There is no consensus. Community in this
context is a mythical, frequently invoked and much misused term. I don’t
want to be invested in it anymore.

I think it’s time to abandon these false linguistic games we play and go
back to the old model. I miss the days when it was considered reasonable
to simply kick the living shit out of people and put them on the next train
out of town - at least that exchange was clear and honest. I have spent
too much time with both survivors and perpetrators drowning in a deluge
of words that didn’t lead to healing or even fucking catharsis.

I am sick of the language of accountability being used to create mutually
exclusive categories of “fucked up” and “wronged.” I find the language of
“survivor” and “perp” offensive because it does not lay bare all the ways
in which abuse is a dynamic between parties. (Though I will use those
terms here because it’s the common tender we have.)

Anarchists are not immune to dynamics of abuse - that much we can all
agree on - but I have come to realize more and more that we cannot keep
each other safe. Teaching models of mutual working consent is a good
start, but it will never be enough: socialization of gender, monogamy -
the lies of exclusivity and the appeal of “love” as propriety are too strong.
People seek out these levels of intensity when the love affair is new, when
that obsessive intimacy feels good and then don’t know how to negotiate
soured affection.

I am sick of triangulating.

I am sick of hiding power exchange.

I am sick of hope.

I have been raped.

I have been an unfair manipulator of power in some of my intimate
relationships.

I have had sexual exchanges that were a learning curve for better
consent.

I have the potential in me to be both survivor and perp, abused and
abuser, as we all do.

These essentialist categories don’t serve us. People rape, very few people
are rapists in every sexual exchange. People abuse one another: this
abuse is often mutual and cyclical; cycles are hard but not impossible to
amend. These behaviors change contextually. Therefore there is no such
thing as safe space.

I want us to be honest about being at war - with ourselves, with our
lovers and with our “radical” community - because we are at war with the
world at large and those tendrils of domination exist within us and they
affect so much of what we touch, who we love, and those we hurt.

But we are not only the pain we cause others or the violence inflicted
upon us.

We need more direct communication and when that doesn’t help we need
direct engagement in all its horrible messy glory. As long as we make
ourselves vulnerable to others we will never be safe in the total sense of
the word.

There is only affinity and trust kept.

There is only trust broken and confrontation.

The war isn’t going to end anytime soon
Let’s be better at being in conflict

Vr Vr -sV -sV

comes from trust, and trust is personal. It can’t be mediated or rubber
stamped at a community level. My “safe” lover might be your secret
abuser and my caustic codependent ex might be your healthy, tried and
true confidant. Rape culture is not easily undone, but it is contextual.
People in relation to each other create healthy or unhealthy exchanges.
There is no absolute for “fucked up,” “healed,” or “safe” - it changes with
time, life circumstance, and each new love affair. It is with feelings of
unease that I have observed the slippery slope of “emotional” abuse
become a common reason to initiate an accountability process...

Here is the problem with using this model for emotional abuse: it’s an
unhealthy dynamic between two people. So who gets to call it? Who gets
to wield that power in the community? (And let’s all be honest that there
is power in calling someone to an accountability process.) People in
unhealthy relationships need a way to get out of them without it getting
turned into a community judgement against whoever was unlucky
enough to not realize a bad dynamic or call it abuse first.

These processes frequently exacerbate mutually unhealthy power plays
between hurt parties. People are encouraged to pick sides and yet no
direct conflict brings these kinds of entanglements to any kind of resolve.
Using accountability models developed all those years ago to deal with
serial rapists in the radical scene has not been much to help in getting
people out of the sand pit of damaging and codependent relationships.
Emotional abuse is a fucking vague and hard to define term. It means
different things to every person.

If someone hurts you and you want to hurt them back, then do it but
don’t pretend it’s about mutual healing. Call power exchange for what it

is. It’s OK to want power back and it’s OK to take it, but never do
anything to someone else that you couldn’t stomach having someone do
to you if the tables were turned. Those inclined to use physical brutality
to gain power need to be taught a lesson in a language they will
understand: the language of physical violence. Those mired in unhealthy
relationships need help examining a mutual dynamic and getting out of

it, not assigning blame. No one can decide who deserves compassion and
who doesn’t except the people directly involved.

There is no way to destroy rape culture through non-violent
communication because there is no way to destroy rape culture without
destroying society. In the meantime let’s stop expecting the best or the
worst from people.

I am sick of accountability and its lack of transparency.

That’s the thing about patriarchy: it’s fucking pervasive; and that’s the
thing about being an anarchist or trying to live free, fierce, and without
apology: none of it keeps you safe from violence. There is no space we
can create in a world as damaged as the one we live in which is absent
from violence. That we even think it is possible says more about our
privilege than anything else. Our only autonomy lies in how we negotiate
and use power and violence ourselves.

I really want to emphasize: there is no such thing as safe space under
patriarchy or capitalism in light of all the sexist, hetero-normative, racist,
classist (etc) domination that we live under. The more we try and
pretend safety can exist at a community level, the more disappointed and
betrayed our friends and lovers will be when they experience violence
and do not get supported. Right now we’ve been talking a good game but
the results are not adding up.

There are a lot of problems with the current model: the very different
experiences of sexual assault and relationship abuse get lumped together.
Accountability processes encourage triangulation instead of direct
communication, and because conflict is not pushed, most honest
communication is avoided. Direct confrontation is good! Avoiding it
doesn’t allow for new understandings, cathartic release, or the eventual
forgiveness that person-to-person exchanges can lead to.

We have set up a model where all parties are encouraged to simply
negotiate how they never have to see each other again or share space.
Some impossible demands/promises are meted out and in the name of
confidentiality, lines are drawn in the sand on the basis of generalities.
Deal with your shit but you can’t talk about the specifics of what went
down and you can’t talk to each other. The current model actually creates
more silence: only a specialized few are offered information about what
happened but everyone is still expected to pass judgment. There is little
transparency in these processes.

In an understandable attempt to not trigger or cause more pain we talk
ourselves in increasingly abstracted circles while a moment or dynamic
between two people gets crystallized and doesn’t change or progress.
“Perps” become the sum total of their worst moments. “Survivors” craft
an identity around experiences of violence that frequently keeps them
stuck in that emotional moment. The careful nonviolent communication
of accountability doesn’t lead to healing. I’ve seen these processes divide
a lot of scenes but I haven’t seen them help people get support, retake
power, or feel safe again.

Rape breaks you: the loss of bodily control, how those feeling of
impotence revisit you, how it robs you of any illusion of safety or sanity.
We need models that help people take power back and we need to call
the retribution, control, and banishing of the current model for what it is:
revenge. Revenge is OK but let’s not pretend it’s not about power! If
shaming and retaliatory violence is what we have to work with then let’s
be real about it. Let’s chose those tools if we can honestly say that is what
we want to do. In the midst of this war we need to get better at being in
conflict.

Abuse and rape are inevitable consequences of the sick society we are
forced to live under. We need to eviscerate and destroy it, but in the
meantime, we can’t hide from it or the ways it affects our most personal
relationships. I know in my own life an important process in my struggle
for liberation was making my peace with the worst consequences of my
personal assault on patriarchy. Dealing with being raped was an
important part of understanding what it meant to choose to be at war
with this society.

Rape has always been used as this tool of control - proffered up as a
threat of what would happen if I, in my queerness and gendered
ambiguity, continued to live, work, dress, travel, love or resist the way
that I chose to. Those warnings held no water for me; in my heart I knew
it was only a matter of time - no matter what kind of life I chose to live
because my socially prescribed gender put me at constant risk for
violation. I was raped at work and it took me a while to really name that
assault as rape. After it happened mostly what I felt - once the pain, rage
and anger subsided - was relief. Relief that it had finally happened.

I had been waiting my whole life for it to happen, had a few close calls
and finally I knew what it felt like and I knew I could get through it. I
needed that bad trick. I needed a concrete reason for the hunted feelings
that stemmed from my friend’s rape, murder, and mutilation a few years
back. I needed to have someone hurt me and realize I had both the desire
to kill them and the personal control to keep myself from doing it. I
needed to reach out for support and be disappointed. Because that’s how
it goes down: ask the survivors you know most people don’t come out of
it feeling supported. We’ve raised expectations but the real life experience
is still shit.

I was traveling abroad when it happened. The only person I told called
the police against my wishes. They searched the “crime” scene without
my consent and took DNA evidence because I didn’t dispose of it.
Knowing I had allowed myself in a moment of vulnerability to be

pressured and coerced into participating in the police process against my
political will made me feel even worse than being violated had. I left
town shortly thereafter so I didn’t have to continue to be pressured by my
“friend” into cooperating with the police any more than I already had.
The only way I felt any semi-balance of control during that period was by
taking retribution against my rapist into my own hands.

I realized that I also could wield threats, anger and implied violence as a
weapon. After my first experience of “support” I chose to do that alone. I
could think of no one in that moment to ask for help but it was OK
because I realized I could do it myself. In most other places I think I could
have asked some of my friends to help me. The culture of nonviolence
does not totally permeate all of the communities I exist in. The lack of
affinity I felt was a result of being transient to that city but I don’t think
my experience of being offered mediation instead of confrontation is
particularly unique.

In the case of sexual assault I think retaliatory violence is appropriate,
and I don’t think there needs to be any kind of consensus about it.
Pushing models that promise to mediate instead of allow confrontation is
isolating and alienating. I didn’t want mediation through legal channels
or any other. I wanted revenge. I wanted to make him feel as out of
control, scared, and vulnerable as he had made me feel. There is no
safety really after a sexual assault, but there can be consequences.

We can’t provide survivors safe space: safe space, in a general sense,
outside of close friendships, some family and the occasional affinity just
doesn’t exist. Our current models of accountability suffer from an over¬
abundance of hope. Fuck the false promises of safe space - we will never
get everyone on the same page about this. Let’s cop to how hard healing
is and how delusional any expectation for a radical change of behavior is
in the case of assault. We need to differentiate between physical assault
and emotional abuse: throwing them together under the general rubric
interpersonal violence doesn’t help.

Cyclical patterns of abuse don’t just disappear. This shit is really really
deep; many abusers were abused and many abused become abusers. The
past few years I have watched with horror as the language of
accountability became an easy front for a new generation of emotional
manipulators. It’s been used to perfect a new kind of predatory maverick -
the one schooled in the language of sensitivity, using the illusion of
accountability as community currency.

So where does real safety come from? How can we measure it? Safety